Experimental and 3D Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation of a Cylindrical Bubble Column in the Heterogeneous Regime

Experimental and numerical evaluation of a cylindrical bubble column was performed in order to analyze the liquid behavior and the turbulence quantities in the heterogeneous regime of operation. Three different gas superficial velocities were tested: 3, 5, and 7 cm/s. The particle imagine velocimeter technique was employed to obtain the experimental axial liquid velocity profiles, while ANSYS 14 was used for the simulations. Velocity fluctuations, turbulent intensity, kinetic turbulent energy, and Reynolds stress tensors were obtained from the experimental data. Two drag models were compared; standard k-epsilon and Reynolds stress model were applied for the turbulence. Results have shown that in the heterogeneous regime an anisotropic consideration of the turbulence is more appropriate for describing the bubbly flow.